Through Christ to God: Fourth Gospel

Wednesday, April 8, 2026

The Gospel of Christ

Our next question is a crucial one: Did Christ Himself actually teach the doctrine of justification by faith — the doctrine Paul so clearly proclaims? Or did Paul, however sincerely, reshape Christ’s message through his own way of thinking and the world he lived in?

Put differently, did Paul truly understand and faithfully represent the mind and purpose of the One whose messenger he claimed to be? And to what extent might Paul’s own background and habits of thought have influenced the way he expressed Christ’s teaching?

JOSEPH AGAR BEET

A leading British Methodist exegete and systematic theologian of his day, Joseph Agar Beet was born at Sheffield on September 27, 1840. He was professor of systematic theology in Wesleyan College, Richmond, 1885-1905. He was also a member of the faculty of theology in the University of London 1901-1905. He was the author of several books, including commentaries on the letters of the apostle Paul, books on systematic theology, and books on other Biblical and theological topics. Some of his views on eschatology were controversial in his own lifetime. Sympathetic to the late nineteenth-century Holiness Movement, he produced an updating of Wesley's teaching on Christian perfection: Holiness: Symbolic and Real (1910). He died on May 25, 1924.